AriElle
by Serena Thorn
Summary: Elle is a Company Girl with a crush and she is about to realize happy endings don’t always come about the way you expect. Another Noah/Elle fairy tale. Oneshot


Title: AriElle  
Summary: Elle is a Company Girl with a crush and she is about to realize happy endings don't always come about the way you expect.  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: None  
Disclaimer: Heroes is not owned by me, but by Tim Kring. I'm simply borrowing these characters for non-profit entertainment.  
A/N: This one is an AU for very early Vol. 3 and the few references that are there are vague at best. Now, a huge THANK YOU to Pat and Karen for making me want to do this. Yep it's another Noelle fairy tale, as promised. This time set to Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid.

* * *

Elle had always been curious about life outside of The Company walls. She had grown up inside, her father priming her to be a Company Girl. It was all she knew, but hardly all she wanted.

She had also managed to learn to keep to the shadows, how to listen to the other agents' conversations about field missions. They excited her more than any story book ever could, even when she was a child. She couldn't deny her want to be allowed on even just one. To know what it was like on the outside, to know what fresh air really felt like.

But then there had come a day when something she had longed for from the outside had come to her. At least to her level of the facility. She only watched him at first. Tall and lean, blonde haired and blue eyed, seemingly only a few years older than her. It was days of watching him in his cell before she went to him.

He was charming, of course. He was locked away and would be so for who knew how long and now he had a chance to make the best of it with a young, beautiful and somewhat naïve blonde. He may have been unlucky enough to be caught by The Company but he wasn't stupid enough to pass this up. Something had to be said for his four hundred years of wisdom.

The more Elle talked to him, the more she listened and couldn't help her growing interest. He was a bad boy who enjoyed talking about his past exploits. Mostly those that led to him having been caught and locked away in this cell.

But then a fateful day had finally arrived. The day that Adam had escaped and she had been assigned to bring him back. But Elle couldn't have imagined what she would find.

Adam wasn't supposed to be like the others. He was supposed to be better. But no. Like everyone else he had betrayed her. Betrayed her trust. He had been using her to get out, she knew it now.

Unfortunately for Adam, Elle wasn't one to sit around and cry like some wounded child. No. she wanted revenge. With any other man she would only have to shoot him or stab him, but Adam was immortal. She knew this, of course. However she also knew that like any other special he had a weakness. But then she had no way to find The Haitian and while her father did, she couldn't go to him. Not without him knowing how she had failed him yet again.

There was only one person left. Only one who could find The Haitian and it wouldn't get back to her father. Her stomach tightened at the mere thought of seeing him again but she was desperate. Perhaps a little too desperate.

The lights seemed to dim more with every step she took through the bowels of The Company, knowing Bennet was never anywhere else unless he was in the field. She knew he was there today and she knew he had to find him. It didn't matter how sick it made her feel to know she needed his help, it didn't matter how her father would react to her once again killing someone she wasn't authorized to kill, in her mind it had to be done.

Noah opened the door almost as soon as Elle reached it, opening it before she could even knock. "I wondered when I would see you again."

"You're actually here," she breathed. Part of her had hoped he wouldn't be, that he would be off on his own assignments or just not there, something to give her an easy out at the last second before she sold her soul to the devil.

"Like you, I've been here all along, Elle," he stated, motioning for her to come into the office.

"I need your help."

"Do you?" he smirked.

"Enough with the gloating, Bennet, this is serious."

"How serious? Daddy threatening you with the garden hose again?"

"I need to kill someone who can't be killed by ordinary methods."

That made Noah stand a little taller. If she was going to him in order to kill Claire he would shoot her then and there. Not kill her, no, he would never kill his favorite toy but he would certainly make her into his permanent pet.

"Who?" he asked through a clenched jaw.

She sighed. She didn't want to tell him but she had come this far. "Adam Munroe."

Noah instantly relaxed. "And what might you be willing to give me in return for helping you kill this man?"

"Give you? Why would I have to give you anything? Why can't you just do it?"

"This could get very messy, Elle. Your father was very keen on capturing him, studying him, trying to figure out how to replicate his power. If he's killed, well, we could all find ourselves in situations we don't want to be in. And I assume you mean for me to bring The Haitian in for this as well? That will open the circle even wider and therefore what I would require in return would have to be something substantial."

"Like what?" she muttered.

"You," he answered.

"What?!"

"You heard me, Elle. In three days Adam Munroe will be dead but only and I do mean only if you agree to be my very own personal Company Girl. You won't answer to your father anymore, only to me. You'll be my agent, working under my rules, working under me in any way I see fit. You will belong to me."

"Never," she spat.

Noah shrugged. "Then enjoy seeing Mr. Munroe living forever, staying just as young and irresistible to hoards of other women while you grow old, whither and finally die while he forgets you ever existed."

That only made her sicker. She had already lost Adam and now to see him pay for what he had done to her she would have to be Bennet's. What made the irony worse was remembering how attracted she had been to Bennet when she was younger, how she enjoyed working with him and now this. How could she have fantasized about this… this… monster?

"I don't have all day, Elle. Make up your mind or leave," he finally stated as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Elle swallowed at that. She remembered working with him before. That intensity was impossible to forget. Still, she was desperate and with that she answered, "Deal."

Noah kept to his word but did so in a timely fashion. He couldn't go straight to Adam and kill him of course. And The Haitian? No, this was far too personal for Noah. He had wanted Elle to himself for far too long and he knew the day would come that she would love him again, she only needed an extra little push. Seeing him as her hero would help, he knew.

"Good morning," Noah smiled down at Elle as she began to wake in her bed on the third morning.

"Bennet?" she asked, pulling the covers up over herself as she sat up against her headboard.

"How's my Company Girl this morning?" he asked, that smile never leaving his face as he took a seat beside her.

She groaned. "Is it done?"

"As of last night Mr. Munroe is no more than a big pile of dust."

That time Elle smiled slightly and let her head fall back to the wall behind her. At least there was one man who would never hurt her again. "Why are you the only one I can trust?" It was some cruel twist of fate, she knew.

"Because unlike some I actually care for you."

"Funny way of showing it, Bennet. Having your own personal slave? That counts as caring where you're from?"

"You never asked why I want you to be my own personal Company Girl. You took it for granted that it was for your ability or your Daddy's connections. You never imagined the truth."

She swallowed. "What truth is that?"

"I want to keep you close because you deserve to be working with someone who actually cares for you. Someone who actually loves you."

He had to mean like a daughter. Nothing else would make sense. But then why else would he have been so willing to ruin his standing within The Company? Why else would he keep coming to her like this?

"I've never worked with someone who loved me. Why should now be any different?"

"That's not true, Elle. When you worked with me you were working with someone who loved you. Someone who still loves you and has ever since your father partnered you with me. You never even knew I requested for you to be my partner because of that. To keep you close, to keep you safe, for you to know that there was at least one person who cared about you more than simply what you could do. And to think it didn't even take me three days to know that. You've always turned to me when you were in trouble. It was always me to help you. Now would be no different. But you do deserve to know that there's at least one person who loves you."

"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you wait until now?!" She was ready to scream or electrocute him or beat him to pulp with her bare fists. He could have spared her all of this and he hadn't and yet here he claimed to love her!

Despite the fury in her blue eyes, Noah kept calm and softly asked in reply, "Could you have believed it?"

It was amazing how simply he could knock the wind from her with only a few words. He was right. She couldn't have. "Either way I guess you've gotten what you want."

"Not entirely, not yet. But I'm sure I will one day."

"What is it you want then if not me? You made it pretty clear a few days ago that -"

"I don't want you as my slave, Elle. I want you with me because you want to be, but if this is the only way I can have you close enough so that you can remember how safe you were with me, how much I cared about you before then it'll be worth it. Half the time your father doesn't care whether you live or die and you know it. Me? You have no idea how many times I've wanted him dead for how he's treated you. At least with Adam I got to see some ounce of justice done."

"Bennet -" she breathed before moving forward and claiming his surprisingly soft lips in their first true kiss. She didn't know what to say after that. She didn't love him, at least not that she knew. But in that moment she knew she could and if he was telling her the truth then she knew it would be sooner rather than later. It wouldn't be until a little more time had passed that they would both know that the kiss they shared in her bedroom that morning was their first kiss of true love.

Perhaps Elle's happy ending hadn't come about the way she had originally thought or anticipated, but that didn't change the fact that she had indeed gotten it. With Noah Bennet.

The End


End file.
